Claude Opus 5 (Medium) vs GPT-5.6 Sol (Max)
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5 (Medium) by Anthropic or GPT-5.6 Sol (Max) by OpenAI? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
GPT-5.6 Sol (Max) scores 2.2 points higher (47.0 vs 44.8) but costs 1.3× as much to run the benchmark ($3465 vs $2732; both flagship class). Pick GPT-5.6 Sol (Max) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Claude Opus 5 (Medium).
| Metric | Claude Opus 5 (Medium) | GPT-5.6 Sol (Max) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 44.8 | 47.0 | +4.9% GPT-5.6 Sol (Max) is 4.9% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $2,731.91 | $3,464.84 | +26.8% GPT-5.6 Sol (Max) is 26.8% more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 12.73s | 92.19s | +624.2% GPT-5.6 Sol (Max) is 624.2% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $5.00 / $25.0 | $4.00 / $20.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
GPT-5.6 Sol (Max) vs Claude Opus 5 (Medium): 4.9% more intelligence, 26.8% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 624.2% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 5 (Medium) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) scores 53.60 for $2172.
- GPT-5.6 Sol (Max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Kimi K3.1 Pro scores 55.10 for $3117.
Claude Opus 5 (Medium)GPT-5.6 Sol (Max)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-medium/gpt-5-6-sol · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-medium/gpt-5-6-sol?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill